Everything Not saved is an exercise in artistic liberation. More importantly, perhaps, since it's chock full of tunes, it all comes without them losing the creative ground they've gained, [Apr 2019, p.108]

Employment is an album that demands furious scrawls of red pen in the margins. [Apr 2005, p.120]

Opener 9:13 is too close perhaps to Brian Eno to make much of an impact. But when a chorus of ghostly voices rise above the fractured piano of Phantom Brickworks III, the theme really works, offering a genuinely unsettling air of spookiness. [Jan 2018, p.106]

He's found some endearing and unexpectedly affecting songs. [Oct 2005, p.120]

Engaging stuff. [Apr 2006, p.118]

The acoustic-leaning song-cycle Hendra presents mature reflections on memory and loss. [May 2014, p.120]

Within its polished melancholy, Clean is a raw portrait of sadness. [Apr 2018, p.115]

Call The Comet firmly underlines Johnny Marr's commitment to his solo career. [Aug 2018, p.110]

An even more spare-sounding album. [Mar 2005, p.100]

[A] terrific fourth album. [Nov 2014, p.102]

While they may have broken the slacker's code, the results are worth it. [May 2011, p.115]

Producer Rick Rubin has made Metallica sound like Metallica again. [Nov 2008, p.116]

At the infernal din's core are some excellent, urgent songs of anti-fashion disillusionment. [May 2013, p.98]

Kozelek is typically raw, grouchy and funny, and his words find meaning in the minutiae of his own behavior and the lives of others. [Nov 2013, p.109]

These songs are Blake at his best and most sonically inventive. At 75 minutes-plus and 17 tracks, though, the whole presents a challenge at odds with the sensitivity of those romantic reveries. [#361, p.117]

Dreamy and heartaching, its appearance is actually deceptive. ... A gorgeous record. [Mar 2019, p.115]

Another gem. [Jun 2012, p.104]

Overall, a promising, if risk-free start. [Apr 2019, p.116]

True, even misdirected, Eminem's disaffection sucks you in and the wholesale nihilism can still provoke shivers. But it all used to be more fun.

Music of the mid-00s is undergoing a revival. London-based Sports Team are the fresh case. [Jun 2020, p.107]

Its grit and graft will keep his cult following happy. [Apr 2010, p.112]

Mild existential dread is delivered over a quietly forceful musical template that owes a lot to the third Velvet Underground album. [Jan 2014, p.127]

More accessible than Animal collective, weirder than MGMT, this is otherworldly pop music to make the head spin. [Mar 2010, p.103]

The band seem to be pushing their hi-spec power-indie as far as it can go. [Jun 2017, p.110]

Moffat's half-sung, half-muttered confessionals still lurch between the pulsing beats and pensive instrumentation but the tone is now more funereal than carnal.

All told, one weird trip. [May 2004, p.102]

An intermittently potent album that feels unlikely to etch itself too deeply onto the world. [Aug 2004, p.104]

This assured, intense record heralds the emergence of a major force. [Nov 2003, p.123]

{Bejar's] fondness for drenching songs in production so muddy that they end up as little more than smears of noise. [May 2008, p.130]

There's a welcome '60s pop feel to the material, proof that Lynne doesn't need anyone else to show her how it should be done. [Dec. 2011 p. 129]

The Nihilist is a mind-melting blend of traditional songwriting and endless, restless experimentation. [Jun 2014, p.110]

Her dark theatrics dominate 68 Screen, evoking '70s punks X-Ray Spex with a call-and-response about women's commodified bodies. [Jun 2019, p.115]

2 Bears have hit a rich seam of easy-going melancholic euphoria. [Oct 2014, p.101]

His fourth album shows a continuing talent for both dynamite house beats and reframing idiosyncratic vocalists. [Oct 2017, p.105]

A ferociously Velvetsy turn from Brian Jonestown Massacre's Anton Newcombe on Istanbul IS Sleep only highlights how mind-blowing The Liminanas could be if they ventured further from the shadows. [Mar 2018, p.111]

Calexico rarely disappoint. But this is a definite leap forward. [May 2015, p.102]

Tearing At The Seams more accurately captures the feel of Rateliff's stirring live performances. [Apr 2018, p.112]

It all makes for a strangely seamless collection, with enough moments of brilliance to excuse the lack of progression. [Apr 2011, p.114]

This latest ventures proves equally unconventional [as his collaboration with Sufjan Stevens and his Kenny Dennis EP], the half-hour running time and Cohn's deadbeat rhymes both at odds with the rap mainstream. [Sep 2012, p.111]

The follow-up isn't quite so startling [as his debut] and the horrible guitar indulgence of Dear Friend is his first major misstep, but assisted by Jackson Browne, David Crosby, assorted Heartbreakers, Roy Harper and Wilco's Patrick Sansome he's evolved. [Dec 2013, p.117]

A reminder why she's adored by many. With Palmer's dramatic piano and piercing vocals offset by lush orchestration, it's short on whimsy but long on Big Topics. [May 2019, p.115]

At 65-plus minutes' duration, Honeymoon's submarine/somnambulant vibe does rather overstay its welcome. [Dec 2015, p.115]

A fantastic voyage. [May 2007, p.128]

[A] thoughtful solo debut. [Apr 2014, p.118]

EVen without the Tron-like eye candy of their stage set it's a spectacular show, [Dec 2007, p.115]

Finds him in fine rhyming form... even if the beats aren't always there to back him up. [Mar 2005, p.104]

Thirty years since first making her entrance as the distaff Tom Waits, Rickie Lee Jones still sounds utterly unique. [Dec 2009, p. 126]

Utterly cinematic, it owes as much to Vangelis's Blade Runner soundtrack as derrick May's minimal techno. [Jan 2010, p. 120]

Despite operating in the between-floors world of indie R&B, it connects both sonically and melodically and as such engages the listener rather than, as in the past, totally overwhelming them. [Feb 2018, p.116]

Bloom is one of those rare records that skirt close to perfection, an effortless and intriguing listen that can't help but drag a more significant audience into Bloom's orbit. [Jun 2012, p.98]

She's at her most compelling when the rhythmic cross-currents come with a deep dark undertow. [Jul 2012, p.103]

It's a stunning, stealthy, faintly malevolent collection of songs that serve as a reminder of this songwriter's power and innovation. [Nov 2018, p.106]

The English Riviera is a major progression for Metronomy, idiosyncratic but also as instantly accessible as, say, Hot chip. It's a winning combination. [May 2011, p.114]

A glorious reinterpretation of some of his [Merle Haggard's] finest songs. [Jul 2017, p.104]

While it's a policy of extremes that occasionally leaves little room for light and shade, it makes for an occasionally thrilling debut--ambitious, noisy and, most importantly, packed full of tunes. [Nov 2009, p.103]

In the moving figure of The Bride, Khan has delivered her defining statement as an artist. [Aug 2016, p.109]

Given Mascis's croaking rasp this shouldn't work, but it does, because he's turned in his best collection of songs for a long time. [Apr 2011, p.104]

Seeds is not 1000 per cent their best work, but it's not far off. [Dec 2014, p.108]

Ape In Pink Marble shows that underneath the mannered eccentricities, Banhart's chief talent has always been to write endearing songs. [Nov 2016, p.103]

While never quite as fiendish as its title suggests, it's certainly sinister. [Sep 2006, p.112]

Dirty Projectors' David Longstreth deserves praise for the way he's reinterpreted "Damaged." [Dec 2007, p.116]

The vibe remians woebegone but with the combination of lush arrangements and gallows wit add layers of transcendence previously only hinted at. [Jun 2010, p.131]

What distinguishes Phantom Radio as a "band" project rather than a solo one is moot, but when the result is this good, who cares? [Nov 2014, p.114]

Pitched somewhere between James Blake and Erykah Badu, it's a subtly delightful album. [Mar 2015, p.109]

All in all, a brooding and brilliant record. [Oct 2017, p.103]

He's retained much of his fizz, but his new, relatively thoughtful, air means that the piano-led The Bruiser exudes a heap of rue and regret, while the autobiographical Mississippi Delta toasts a bright new future in a bright new place, something this album cements. [Oct 2018, p.116]

The results, while never quite suggesting imminent breakthrough, are sometimes elegiac. [Nov 2006, p.147]

It's like being hit over the head by a giant hammer in a neverending Itchy & Scrathy episode. [Jan 2009, p.113]

Randell's lyrics reveal subversiveness too, telling of teenage insurrections and small-town upsets. Steve Hassett's backing, meanwhile, is characterised by enough strange impulses and pleasing deviations to whirr and rattle through the stillness. The band's third album is filled with such quirks and quiet rebellions. [Aug 2018, p.113]

Intimately compelling, from his first strum to last breath, Regan passes the acid test of songmanship; all 10 are perfect as they are. [Feb 2013, p.109]

At times it verges on beautiful classical pop. At others, it's like listening to a taxing piece of modernist musical theatre. [Aug 2013, p.105]

If Ben Knox Miller's vocals barely break the surface, underneath lies a record of hidden depths. [Apr 2018, p.112]

As an act of Catharsis, Storm Damage was clearly an important one for the singer, even if ultimately it yields mixed results. [Apr 2020, p.114]

McClure says he's regressed to the catchy rock essentials after years spent experimenting: smart move. [Jan 2017, p.104]

It's the songs not the approach which set her apart. [Aug 2003, p.116]

Fannypack might already be sick of the Beastie Boys comparisons, but it works on too may levels to be ignored. [Oct 2003, p.104]

More tightly structured than their last outing TNT, this has enough dizzy polyrhythms and craziness for the free jazzers but is chock full of tunes, good humour and a certain grooviness

Quirky, spunky and really quite beautiful, this is British pop at its finest.

It's a fine set, full of calm, thoughtful rhyming. [Nov 2004, p.125]

Tucker's inimitable vocals are savage and exhilarating throughout. [Nov 2012, p.108]

Occasionally distant, the restrained urgency of Dracula and soulful vocals of Closer ripple with an enticing warmth. [May 2013, p.113]

A band recharged and re-energised. [Mar 2019, p.120]

SOHN is partial to sampling his own voice to augment the wounded confessionals. They stutter rhythmically and mix with a patchwork of minimal yet intricate electronics and low end beats to spine-tingling effect. [May 2014, p.118]

It's a strange, sometimes excellent record. [Feb 2019, p.119]

Bish Bosch is an album even fans won't necessarily play often, but on those special occasions, as per title, it very much does the job. [Jan 2013, p.104]

Ambitiously wide-ranging. [Apr 2005, p.118]

Leaving no room for nuance,it's a relentlessly dark wall of sonic aggression. [Apr 2012, p.101]

Atmospheric, soulful and cohesive, with beats as strong as rhymes. [Jun 2012, p.108]

Mastodon return to the dense riffing of old. [Aug 2014, p.109]

His remarkable Warp debut follows a series of effective "folktronica" albums on the US independent Mush. [Jul 2009, p.117]

This is their strong set of songs in years. [Feb 2018, p.108]

This 35-minute suite is hypnotically cinematic, skillfully orchestrated. [May 2014, p.119]

The 11th studio [release] has a brooding familiarity yet is also coolly exhilarating. [Oct 2015, p.111]

The best record of her life by some distance. [Jan 2010, p. 122]

The Low Highway has the brains and passion of Earle's last few releases, even if it's not especially surprising. [May 2013, p.100]

The melting-pot approach, amplified by Toure's raw, yearning vocals, is what makes these 10 tracks so tantalising and evocative. [Jul 2015, p.119]

Show Yourself and Steambreather prove that its possible to perform challenging, complex material without being self-indulgent. [May 2017, p.108]

Happyness's second LP is deceptively well thought-out, deftly constructed around unusual chord changes, and laced with subtly eyebrow raising sonics. ... Making you wonder just how impactful this able trio might be if they properly pulled their finger out. [Jun 2017, p.106]